Ken Wassum, Associate Director, Clinical Development & Support

Every New Year brings renewed commitments for better health, including quitting smoking. January 1 is a popular time for smokers to make a quit attempt, and success in quitting can mean better health and a longer, more productive life.

If you are one of those smokers who is looking at the New Year as an opportunity to quit you may discover that you will stay more motivated by thinking about what’s important to you in life and how quitting smoking fits in with these values.

Here a suggested exercise you can do.  This is called Core Values. Core values are beliefs or things that are very important to you. They are much of what make you who you are and what you believe.

• Step 1: Take a piece of letter-sized paper and draw a line down the middle.
• Step 2: On the left side of the line write “What Matters to Me” at the top.  Under this heading list the things you value - things that are important to you.  Here are some ideas:  good health; physical activity; my work; my children; my grandchildren; my faith; long life; money, and so on.  I am sure that you can add some things that are unique to you. Take a little time and list the things that are really core to your life - things that really, really matter to you.
• Step 3: On the right side of the line, write down how quitting tobacco fits in with each core value on the left side of the line. To illustrate how this works, let’s say one of your core values is financial security. Opposite this value you would write down how quitting smoking supports financial security.  You might write down, “I would save a lot of money if I quit since I spend about $150 per month on cigarettes, etc.”  Continue doing this for all the values on the left side of the line.
• Step 4: Keep this list handy when you quit.  Look at it each day to remind yourself of why you are quitting tobacco.

Sometimes when we write our thoughts down on paper they have more power and we can see and think about them more clearly. Understanding how quitting smoking fits in with what you value in life can be very helpful in staying on-track.

So if you are thinking about quitting on New Year’s, good for you!  We wish you success and good health in the New Year.